Summary

This study records discontinuous, concerted, contentious
forms of collective action occurring in the London region from 1758 to
1820 and in Britain as a whole from 1828 to 1834. These contentious
gatherings are defined as occasions on which at least ten or more
persons assembled in a publicly-accessible place and either by word or
deed made claims that would, if realized, affect the interests of some
person or group outside their own number. In the world of eighteenth
and nineteenth century Britain such gatherings would include almost
every event that an observer or historian would label disturbance,
disorder, riot, or protest in addition to the numerous meetings,
rallies, marches, processions, celebrations, and other sanctioned
assemblies during which people made claims. One of the aims of the
principal investigators was to study the structure of debate and
political action among citizens in a major Western state during a
period of transition to the more formal methods of modern popular
collective action such as voting, petitioning, and participation in
special-interest associations.

Citation

Horn, Nancy, and Tilly, Charles. Contentious Gatherings in Britain, 1758-1834. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2009-08-14. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08872.v2

Geographic Coverage

Restrictions

Time Period(s)

1758 -- 1834

Date of Collection

1975 -- 1984

Data Collection Notes

This study represents one of 11 datasets which together
constitute the BRIT database. This database was produced by research
groups at the Center for Research on Social Organization at the
University of Michigan and at the Center for Studies of Social Change
(CSSC) at the New School for Social Research and combines two
overlapping studies: the Great Britain Study and the Geography of
Contention in London Study. Documentation provided with this dataset
refers to all parts of the BRIT database. However, only the first
dataset (EVENT), which contains coded descriptions of the contentious
gathering as a whole, is available at present and is described in
detail. Users who desire further information on the BRIT database
should consult CSSC Working Paper #32, "Catalogs of Contention in
Britain, 1758-1834" by Nancy Horn and Charles Tilly. The present
documentation is excerpted from that working paper.

Data Type(s)

Original Release Date

1988-03-16

Version Date

2009-08-14

Version History

2009-08-14 SAS, SPSS, and Stata setups have been added to this data collection.

1988-03-16 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Notes

Data in this collection are available only to users at ICPSR member institutions.

This study is provided by ICPSR. ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.